"So he isn't adaptin' well?"

"He isn't," Susamaru replied to James as they spoke privately about how Senjuro had acted in the dream. "He was way too hesitant to kill projections. I had to reiterate to him several times that they're not real people."

"I see," James nodded. "Well, it is a bit of a jump to go from not killin' anyone to killin' a whole bunch of people."

"I don't want to have to remind him while we do this for real that none of the people around us are real. He needs to understand that in a dream, killing people has no consequences in the real world, especially if they're not even real people."

"I can do some one-on-one with him," James offered. "I'll teach him personally if I gotta."

"I hope it works. I don't want to have to drop him from the mission."

"Me neither. We'll need all the people we can get for this."

Susamaru then yawned and stretched her arms before saying to James, "I feel tired again already. I could use a nap."

"Ya just had one," he replied with a chuckle.

"Yeah, for a few brief minutes. An expectant mother does need a bit more sleep, after all. Will you talk to Senjuro about it, dear?"

"Yes," James nodded.

"Promise me you will."

"I promise." James then gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and told her before leaving the bedroom they shared, "Go enjoy your nap. I'm gonna go prepare for a night mission."

"Stay safe out there," Susamaru told him.

"I will!"

February 12, 1914

As Senjuro swept the back porch of the Rengoku Estate, he heard James call his name from behind. "Hey, Senjuro, I gotta talk to ya 'bout somethin'. Come on over here."

Senjuro asked him as he set down his broom, "What is it, James-san?"

"It's about the test we had yesterday," James explained. "Susamaru's been tellin' me that you're havin' a bit of trouble adjustin' to the dream, largely when it comes to defendin' yourself against hostile projections."

Senjuro sighed and replied to him, "Well, I…"

"Just talk to me," James encouraged him. "What's botherin' you?"

Senjuro sat down in a nearby seat and told James, "I know they're not real, but… I find myself having a hard time killing them because they look so real, James."

"So it's that," James realized. "I see now. Y'all got reservations about killin' projections 'cause your mind still thinks they're real, huh?"

"Exactly."

"Well," James then said as he sat down next to him. "I can understand why y'all feel that way. Really, though, the only way to get over that is through exposure via havin' a lot of these dreams."

"So you mean you want me to practice killing in my dreams?"

"Yep. I mean, for me, well… Given my background as a soldier, I didn't exactly have too many reservations about takin' someone else's life, especially when they were tryin' to kill you." James sighed as he looked up and told Senjuro, "Listen, kid, I've taken a lot of lives in the almost sixty-nine years I've been here. I ain't never taken a life intentionally that was innocent, but still, it does weigh down on me sometimes. Even if the person at the other end of your gun is the worst person you can possibly think of, the fact that you killed 'em can still weigh on you."

Curious, Senjuro asked him, "What do you mean by intentional, by the way?"

James admitted, "One time, somethin' real bad happened while I was on a hunt, Senjuro. I was huntin' down a pair of demons in Mississippi that were goin' 'round and killin' sharecroppers. Me, Zeke, and Alice found 'em takin' a whole family hostage…"

Rural Mississippi, 1870

"In there!" Ezekiel pointed to a cabin located on a large farm where two demons had run into. "They ran in there!"

James shouted to Alice, "We found 'em, Alice!"

As the two of them caught up to Ezekiel and readied their rifles, they heard screams inside the cabin, causing all of them to panic. Ezekiel, wielding a shotgun, found that the door was locked, so he aimed his shotgun and the lock and blasted it off, yelling as he did, "We're comin' in!" As the door flung open, he saw the two demons, who had already killed the father and grandfather of the family and were holding the mother, grandmother, and two young children hostage. Ezekiel aimed his shotgun at the demons and ordered them, "Let 'em go! You ain't got nowhere to run!"

The two demons, both of whom were Black like the family they were holding and two of the people confronting them, turned to Ezekiel. One of them, who bore two horns on his forehead, yelled at him, "Why should I listen to you?"

"We got the both of you surrounded," Ezekiel pointed out as James and Alice walked in with their own guns. "You bastards ain't got nowhere to go!"

The mother of the group shouted, "Help us, please!"

"Just hang on tight," said James to the mother. "We'll get y'all outta here soon!"

"Hey now, wait just a second," said the horned demon to James. "Them teeth of your's… You're a ghoul, too?"

"I ain't with you!"

The demon turned to Ezekiel and asked him, "You see this shit? You got a white man taggin' along with y'all."

"That doesn't matter right now," Ezekiel retorted. "Let the family go!"

The second demon asked James, "Were you with the Jackson brothers? Most of the white ghouls are with them…"

"Never! How dare you accuse me of that!"

Ezekiel told James, "Calm down a bit. Keep your focus on the family."

The grandmother then suddenly began to push back at the horned demon, yelling at him as she punched him, "Let my family go!"

In a desperate attempt to get her to stop, Alice yelled, "Wait, hang on!"

However, it was too late. The grandmother managed to bite down on the horned demon's arm, causing him to yell out in pain, "Agh, you old bitch!" The horned demon then pulled out a glass vial from his coat and smashed it in the grandmother's face, forcing her to drink part of the liquid inside and cutting her face up. "Fucking bitch!"

As soon as he broke the glass on her, Ezekiel fired on the demon twice with his shotgun, striking him down. James and Alice also joined in, striking the horned demon as well with their rifles. In the confusion, the second demon pulled out a revolver and also began firing, striking James in the chest with a bullet and sending him down. James yelled as he was struck down, "Agh, damn it!" While on the ground, he fired off two more rounds of his rifle.

When the gunfire ended, the horned demon was now screaming in pain and dying from the poisoned shotgun pellet and rifle rounds that had hit him. "Fuck! It hurts! It fucking hurts! God damn you!"

The second demon, getting up after being shot several times with poisoned rounds, tried aiming his revolver, but Ezekiel used his last shotgun round to almost totally destroy his head and kill him. However, as he went down, the full horror of what had transpired became apparent to them. "Oh no," Alice said in terror. "We…"

"What the fuck…" James stepped back as he realized that in the exchange of gunfire, the rest of the family had also been shot and most likely killed. "Oh no…"

Ezekiel then shouted as he pointed at the grandmother, "There!" To their shock, the liquid that the horned demon had essentially forced into her was one that turned her into a demon. The grandmother, now totally mindless and driven only by hunger, grabbed one of her own dead grandchildren and ripped off an arm before charging at the three of them. Realizing they were out of bullets, Ezekiel drew a knife and stabbed the grandmother twice, forcing her back in pain. He shouted to James, "Get me a poison vial!"

"Here," James said as he quickly grabbed one out of his coat and handed it to Ezekiel, who quickly took it and stabbed the grandmother again as she tried to get up before breaking the vial on the stab wound he had made, pouring its contents directly into her. The grandmother let out an inhuman scream as she began to die from the poison.

Ezekiel told James and Alice, "We need to go! Come on!"

Alice asked him, "What about the family?!"

"They didn't make it," Ezekiel said in frustration. "Come on! We've fucked it up enough as it is!"

As they ran out of the house, the grandmother tried to run after them, but she fell to the ground, now too weak to catch them as she continued to die. As she fell, she knocked a small lantern that had been lit off the wall due to the vibrations from her hitting the floor, which ended up starting a fire. James said as smoke began to pour from the house, "What the fuck… We…"

"They got us good," Ezekiel replied. "And we couldn't save 'em."

James kicked the ground in frustration, yelling at himself, "God damn it, why?!"

Ezekiel sighed and told his two compatriots, "We need to go before anyone sees us."

"How the Hell am I supposed to react to that?! We killed a whole fuckin' family!"

"Quiet down," Ezekiel warned him in a hushed tone. "We're gonna talk about it when we get back!"

James sighed, still angry at himself for what the trip had done. "We… We could've done more… We should have…"

Alice put a hand on James' shoulder and told him, "Come on. We can't stay here, Jack." As the trio ran away from the scene, Alice thought to herself in sorrow, "Today, we failed. Lord, have mercy on us despite our failure, though I suspect you may not." As the cabin they had been in burned in a now raging inferno, all three of them would have to reflect on what the demons had done, as well as what they had done, once they returned to safety at the home of a sympathizer in a nearby town.

Present

"I had no idea," Senjuro said once James finished his story. "Listen, I… I don't blame you for that."

"I don't anymore, either," James replied. "I've come to realize that you can't save 'em all, and that sometimes, people will die. Of course, that ain't no excuse to not at least try."

"My brother saw demons kill innocent people before he had a chance to save them, too," Senjuro added. "It weighed on him quite a bit."

"I'm aware. He told me a story or two about that. I definitely got a feelin' from him that he felt guilty about what happened."

"Yeah…"

"But," James then said to change the subject of the conversation back to Senjuro's troubles in dreams. "We can't dwell on it too much. Besides, the main thing is fixin' those troubles you're havin' in dreams."

"What do you propose?"

"We'll do some one-on-one dreams. How about we do one in the mornin' tomorrow, and we'll go from there?"

Senjuro nodded. "Sounds good to me. I'll see you first thing in the morning."

February 13, 1914

Inside a rather simple dream taking place at the Ubuyashiki Estate, James told Senjuro, "So, here we got the Ubuyashiki Estate. Did your brother or your father ever take ya here?"

"No," Senjuro shook his head. "The rules said I couldn't go."

"Well now you can inside this dream," James replied with a smile. "This is entirely accurate to what this place is like in real life. The people you'll see, however, won't be. You ain't gonna find any of the other Pillars or the Ubuyashiki family themselves. Instead, you'll just find random people that my subconscious created out of all the people I've ever met before in my life."

"Are there ever exact copies of real people?"

"There shouldn't be," James answered. "If there are, that's a bad sign. It means you got an invasive projection. They're a whole load of trouble because they can often try to disrupt your plans. Your projections should be a composite of random people you've met, not exact copies."

"I see," Senjuro replied as he looked around. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Just walk around," James explained. "Get a feel for the area, and then come back here in about fifteen minutes, okay?"

"Alright." Senjuro then walked away, following James's instructions.

James then said to himself, "Now, what shall I do…?"

After a few minutes of exploring the empty main house of the rather expansive but also quaint estate, he thought he heard footsteps nearby and turned his head to find a random person walking past him in the upstairs hallway. "Oh… It's just a projection." He thought to himself as he looked around, "The furnishings inside here harken back to a time before even the American expedition in 1853. It's as if the house hasn't been touched since the reign of Emperor Kokaku. The only thing so far that reminds me I'm in the Taisho era are a few electric lights and the telephone system here. Everything else is so much older."

However, he then heard what he thought was a familiar voice call out to him from behind. "Senjuro?"

Senjuro turned around and gasped as soon as he saw who called his name. "Wait a minute…"

Standing before Senjuro and hearing his family's haori was his deceased brother. He bore no injuries nor any other signs of what had happened to him when he had fought Akaza last September. "I see James has gotten you into dreamsharing. It's not often I see other people aside from him inside his dreams."

Senjuro was shocked. A part of him wanted to run up and embrace him, but another part of him reminded him that the Kyojuro standing before him was not real. "You… You live… Are you…"

"I've been inside his dreams for a while now," Kyojuro replied. "How about you?"